Saturday, June 30, 2012

Just days after the breakdown of talks with the West over Iran’s nuclear program, the deputy chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards announced that there soon will be war – and that Allah will ensure his forces are victorious.

The last round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany) ended in Moscow last week without any agreement on Iran’s illicit nuclear program.

Gen. Hossein Salami, in a televised interview, boasted that, “Iran has complete control of all the enemy’s interests around the world and is on a path to reach equivalency with world powers.” The commander emphasized that Iran’s nuclear program is irreversible, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Salami said war is inevitable, and the Iranian forces are ready.

“The current sanctions will only help Iran with its progress, and the Iranian ballistic missiles can target the enemy’s moving carriers with 100 percent accuracy,” he warned the West. “The Guards’ operational plan includes a radius of deterrence in the region in which all interests of the enemy have been identified, and in case of war, those interests will be attacked.”

Guards’ commanders have stated previously that all U.S. bases in the region are targeted with missiles and will be attacked should America strike Iran.

Salami said Iranian ballistic missiles can travel at several times the speed of sound and cannot easily be tracked and destroyed. “Our defense inventory is so great that at times our brothers in the Guards face limitations with space.”

The Revolutionary Guards have more than 1,000 ballistic missiles capable of reaching all U.S. bases in the region, all of Israel and some capitals in Europe. In collaboration with China and North Korea, they are also working on intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Salami said the Guards are on high alert, adding, “Our forces in relation to our internal security will complete their mission with all of their capability.”

In 2009, millions of Iranians took to the street demanding regime change, but ultimately the uprising was cruelly suppressed and many Iranians were tortured and executed. According to statistics from the Islamic regime’s Justice Department, all Iranian prisons are overflowing and there is a need for more prisons. As reported by Iranian officials, last year alone more than 600 people were executed, including women.

Salami repeated that the Guards are ready for war, which is close, and though it will be very difficult, “We have faith in Allah.”

In another sign that the Iranian officials expect war, Iran’s supreme leader Wednesday urged all factions of the regime, political and military, to unite and remain steadfast in defense of Islam in confronting the “arrogant powers.”

According to Sepah News, the official media outlet of the Guards, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a meeting with regime officials, stated, “Today the arrogant powers of the world have focused all their power to hurt the Islamic republic and stop its progress (nuclear program), which motivates the Islamic world.”

Referring to sanctions on Iran, Khamenei said, “America itself is surrounded by serious problems, which cannot be solved. … Their main goal is to separate the Islamic republic from the support of its people. … Allah willing, this conspiracy will also be defeated.”

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award-winning book, “A Time to Betray.” He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

How much did Obama know of this Jihadist’s intentions, and when did he know it? Perhaps that will help explain Obama’s current denials to cooperate with Congress.

I see a pattern with this Obama regime. A pattern that would, upon consideration of his actions and statements, indicate that Obama is working as an operative for Islamic Jihadists and America’s Communist enemies. Rather than working to defend America’s allies, interests and Constitution, Obama and his regime are working daily to dismantle American Security – while providing every avenue and excuse for Islamic Jihadists to continue to wage their war against the West .

Obama’s regime and supporters have made it clear that his enemies are Conservative Americans, America’s Christian and Judaic Heritage and Foundations, Constitutionally protected liberties and restraints on government. It is no coincidence that Obama’s enemies are also the same targets of Islamic Jihadists.

A top State Department official spelled out on Tuesday that the goal of the United States in its negotiations in the Middle East is to pressure Israel into expelling Jews from Judea and Samaria in order to “end the occupation that began in 1967.”

William J. Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said in his address to the Middle East Institute Tuesday that he sees the U.S.mandate as one of “determined leadership” and that American must be straightforward about its intentions.

Although he made no mention of any demands upon the PA in order to achieve its goal of establishing a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders, Burns was blunt about America’s expectations of Israel.

“We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements; we consider the Israeli offer to restrain settlement activity to be a potentially important step, but it obviously falls short of the continuing Roadmap obligation for a full settlement freeze,” he said.

Further, he said, “We seek to deepen international support for the Palestinian Authority’s impressive plan to build over the next couple years the institutions that a responsible Palestinian state requires. And we also seek progress toward peace between Israel and Syria, and Israel and Lebanon, as part of a broader peace among Israel and all of its neighbors.”

While nearly at the same time, this same buffoon following the directives of his boss, makes an official policy statement in support of a Jihadist regime hell-bent on destroying Israel and the United States (the Great and Little Satans) with the right to have nukes:

U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns told the Middle East Institute in Washington on Tuesday that the U.S. recognizes the Iranian regime’s “right” to nuclear power, does not seek regime change and is ready for more talks with Iran.

“We seek a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not seek regime change. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. With our partners in the international community, we have demonstrated our willingness to take creative confidence-building steps, including our support for the IAEA’s offer of fuel for the Tehran research reactor.”

Coincicence? Inexperience? Collective insanity?

I don’t think so.

As with everything from this regime, it’s all deliberate and purposeful – with a clever masquerade that these ‘missteps’ and ‘apologies’ are for a misguided sense of good.

It’s no secret that President Barack Obama has a problem accepting responsibility for anything negative that happens in his administration.

This is one of the traits that make many people suspicious about his ties to Islam. While the president may not be a practicing Muslim, it is clear that his past and his background provide him with strong Islamic tendencies which are easily supported through his own words as well as many of his actions.

Among the more obvious examples is bowing to the Saudi royal family, the yellow drape at his press conferences which contains Islamic symbols and citing passages from the Koran in some of his speeches.

What is less obvious is a subtle, little known aspect of the faith, which the mainstream media will never mention and which is sure to be strongly refuted by Islamic apologists. The word in Arabic is taqiyya which literally mean “to prevent.” In English, we know it as lying.

The principle of Al-Taqiyya comes from the Koran, noting Muslims are permitted to lie if they are taking preventive measures against harm to themselves or to fellow Muslims. Taqiyya even allows Muslims to deny their faith, so long as they do not mean it in their hearts. It also means that Muslims may use the tactic to gain the upper hand over an opponent for personal gain whenever it may be advantageous to do so.

Surah (Chapter) 3:28 of the Koran states, “Let not believers make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful – he that does this has nothing to hope for from God – except in self-defense. God admonishes you to fear Him; for to God you shall return.”

The Prophet Mohammed refined the concept of taqiyya to a fine art with his “revelations of convenience” which became more frequent after he and his followers migrated to Medina. Chronologically, chapters 9 and 5 of the Koran were the last two suras that were written.

According to the Islamic doctrine of naksh, or “abrogation,” when there is a contradiction between verses in the Koran, the earlier verse is superseded by the later verse. Sura 2:106 states, “If We abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, We will replace it by a better one or one similar.”

In the next to last chapter of the Koran, Sura 9:5 states, “When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.”

And in the final chronological chapter, Sura 5:33 says, “Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land. They shall be held up to shame in this world and sternly punished in the hereafter: except those that repent before you reduce them.”

Some Islamic scholars believe that verses 9:5 and 5:33, all by themselves, cancel at least 124 earlier verses in which Muhammad preached patience and tolerance.

But why does this have anything to do with Barack Obama and the perceptions of his Muslim tendencies? The reason is simple, though it may not be obvious. The president comes from a legacy where taqiyya is a way of life. His narcissism is such that he believes his followers will trust him regardless of any falsehoods he expounds.

It is a documented fact that Obama’s step-father, Lolo Soetoro, was a practicing Muslim who took young Barack to the mosque to pray. Soetoro also enrolled his step-son in school as a Muslim. As a child, Obama grew up in Indonesia, a primarily Muslim country, which would certainly be a powerful influence on someone who is also living in a Muslim household.

In his book, Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama questions the divinity of Christ, which is hardly a Christian trait, but certainly a Muslim point of view.

Further evidence can be found in the May, 2010 issue of Israel Today in an article by Aviel Schneider titled “Obama, a ‘Strategic Catastrophe’” where Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit stated on Nile TV,“The American President told me in confidence that he is a Muslim.”

As Pamela Geller puts it in her blog Atlas Shrugs, “This is devastating news, and yet no media is covering it. A stealth jihad on the White House. Remember, during his campaign, I and others were excoriated for using Obama's middle name. We were accused of implying he was a crypto-Muslim. We could not discuss his background, his Islamic schooling, his ties to Islam. However, I have meticulously documented his Muslim background in my book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America

The president’s inability to accept responsibility for anything negative in his administration combined with the principle of taqiyya, which most certainly influenced him during his lifelong associations with Islam, certainly have had a cumulative affect on his world view.

Whether or not Obama’s comments to Ahmed Aboul Gheit were true or not, someone isn’t telling the truth. On the one hand, Gheit may have been lying. On the other, if he was telling the truth, then Obama was either lying to him or to the American people.

The conclusion? It’s taqiyya in its purest form.

A review of candidate Obama’s words in the 2008 campaign compared with statements of President Obama in 2012 is filled with discrepancies. Politics as usual? Possibly. But it may also be deeper than that. And more sinister. There have been so many lies and deceptions, it is impossible to deny that the President not only fails to accept responsibility for his failures, but he cannot tell the truth about them either.

The seed of Islam blossomed in 7th century Arabia. Even now, some fourteen hundred years later, it remains an Arabic trait to pass blame to someone else. If the concepts of naksh and taqiyya were good enough for the Prophet Mohammed, then they would certainly be acceptable to someone in the 21st century who has similar leanings.

On several occasions, even Osama bin Laden initially denied responsibility for 9/11.

Some voters may not know precisely why they mistrust the president, but a closer look at his background provides strong indications about the way he views the world. If that message seems subliminal it’s because it is intended to be subliminal.

While it could all be a matter of misperception, Pamela Geller offers plenty of food for thought when she writes, “bear in mind, it was verboten to speak of such things during the presidential campaign. That was the level of deceit and obfuscation and taqiyya”

Call it intuition, perception or just a gut feelings, there’s enough evidence to arouse curiosity about the President’s inclinations even if people aren’t exactly sure why.

Dr. Sebastian L. Gorka, a member of the faculty of the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University, said on Tuesday that the Obama Administration is rapidly revising federal counter-terrorism training materials in order to eliminate references to Jihad and Islam.

Government bureaucracies usually take a long time in changing a policy. In this case, he said, "I have never, ever seen such a wide ranging review executed with such alacrity."

Although he blamed Quintan Wiktorowicz, a member of Obama's National Security Council, for implementing the Obama Administration's new overall policy of accommodating radical Islam, including the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, Gorka said Spencer Ackerman of Wired Magazine had helped sparked the review of federal counter-terrorism training materials through a series of controversial articles. One of those articles ran under an inflammatory headline about "Islamophobia" supposedly characterizing the federal government's response to global Islamic terrorism.

As a result of this kind of coverage and the new policy, Gorka said the Obama Administration today forbids the use of the word "Jihad" to describe the terrorists that target America for destruction, even though they are members of the Muslim religion and openly declare their Islamic aims. What is happening in terms of redefining the threat is "unprecedented" and dangerous, he said.

The battle against radical Islam has been transformed into a concern, under President Obama and his adviser Quintan Wiktorowicz, about "violent extremism," not Islamic terrorists or Islamists, he said.

Gorka said that the administration believes there are "good" Islamists and "bad" Islamists and the former can be dealt with. He said this policy is apparent in the decision by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to have contact with the Muslim Brotherhood "Supreme Guide" Mohammed Badei.

While some Islamists are violent and others use democratic methods to achieve power, Gorka said the fact is that they share the same goal-a world-wide system based on Sharia, or Islamic law, resulting in the destruction of America's constitutional system of government.

Gorka said the process of changing the U.S. approach to radical Islam has even become "un-American" in the sense that training materials, including his own, are being censored by federal authorities without the trainers being told who is ordering them altered or deleted and why. "I was one of the victims of that review," he said, explaining that certain slides from one of his FBI presentations were ordered removed. There is no "recourse to appeal" in the unfair process, he said.

Ominously, he said that U.S.-based groups sympathetic or linked to the Muslim Brotherhood are reported to have had an influence on the federal committee set up to review the materials, a fact confirmed by Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst with the Clarion Fund. Mauro reported that Islamists are even exercising influence over what the FBI is telling its agents.

Mauro told Accuracy in Media that another factor behind the ongoing review, in addition to the inflammatory reporting of Wired blogger Ackerman, is the influence of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), which issued a "Fear, Inc." report attacking critics of radical Islam as bigots involved in "Islamophobia."

To understand the dramatic nature of the change that is taking place, Gorka noted that the 600-page bipartisan 9/11 commission report, released in 2004, mentioned Islam 322 times and Jihad as a form of "Holy War" against the West 126 times. But the Obama Administration's 2009 National Intelligence Strategy, a presidential-level document, doesn't mention Islam or Jihad once, he said.

"The enemy has achieved what Sun Tzu, the Asian master of strategy, defined as the ultimate form of victory-if you can win without fighting, you can do no better," Gorka said. "If your enemy has successfully determined the limits of what you can say about him, he is already winning."

He went on, "The fact that it is now forbidden to use the word Jihad in government counter-terrorism training means that the enemy is controlling what we are allowed to say about him. That makes it very difficult to defeat him."

Demonstrating the sensitivity of his remarks, delivered during a conference sponsored by the Westminster Institute, Gorka said that his speech should not be construed as necessarily representing the views of the U.S. Government. He has worked for or with various government agencies for eight years.

The title of the Tuesday event was "Dangerous Embrace: The U.S. and the Islamist."

Gorka's disclosures about the unprecedented nature of the radical rewriting of government counter-terror manuals and presentations came as a new book by Edward Klein discloses that Obama's former Christian pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said he was not sure if Obama had ever repudiated his Islamic upbringing and background. "That's hard to tell," Wright said, when asked if Obama had given up Islam, a religion in which he was raised and trained. Obama today claims to be a Christian.

Gorka and Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, another speaker, discussed the advance of radical Islam under the Obama Administration, but did not hold the President personally responsible for what is happening. Instead, Sookhdeo criticized Rep. Peter King, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, for not doing enough, in his view, to expose the radical nature of Islam. In fact, King has held several hearings on the topic and has been a strong critic of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Robert R. Reilly, Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and former director of the Voice of America, was the final speaker at the conference and discussed "the Fallacy of the Islamist Road to Democracy and Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy."

Obama's foreign policy has been demonstrated in the overthrow of Egypt's pro-Western ruler, Hosni Mubarak, during the so-called "Arab spring," making way for representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood to take power. The Obama Administration meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood that have followed this disaster represent a policy previously advocated by the Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

Gorka, who recently became an American citizen, highlighted a photo of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meeting with Muslim Brotherhood "Supreme Guide" Mohammed Badei. But he did not comment during the question-and-answer period when an audience member asked the speakers whether President Obama's Islamic background, as discussed and acknowledged by Jeremiah Wright, was playing a role in the transformation of U.S. foreign policy in a direction that favors the Muslim Brotherhood.

You have to hand it to the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. They know how to play power politics. They know how to acquire power. And they know how to use power.

Last Friday, the day before voters by most accounts elected the Brotherhood's candidate Mohamed Morsy to serve as Egypt's next president, The Wall Street Journal published a riveting account by Charles Levinson and Matt Bradley of how the Brotherhood outmaneuvered the secular revolutionaries to take control of the country's political space.

The Brotherhood kept a very low profile in the mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square in January and February 2011 that led to the overthrow of then-president Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood's absence from Tahrir Square at that time is what enabled Westerners to fall in love with the Egyptian revolution.

Those demonstrations led to the impression, widespread in the US, that Mubarak's successors would be secular Facebook democrats. The role that Google's young Egyptian executive Wael Gonim played in organizing the demonstrations was reported expansively. His participation in the anti-regime protests - as well as his brief incarceration - was seen as proof that the next Egyptian regime would be indistinguishable from Generation X and Y Americans and Europeans.

In their report, Levinson and Bradley showed how the Brotherhood used the secularists to overthrow the regime, and to provide them with a fig leaf of moderation through March 2011, when the public voted on the sequencing of Egypt's post-Mubarak transformation from a military dictatorship into a populist regime. The overwhelming majority of the public voted to first hold parliamentary elections and to empower the newly elected parliament to select members of the constitutional assembly that would write Egypt's new constitution.

As Egypt's largest social force, the Brotherhood knew it would win the majority of the seats in the new parliament. The March 2011 vote ensured its control over writing the new Egyptian constitution.

In July 2011, the Brotherhood decided to celebrate its domination of the new Egypt with a mass rally at Tahrir Square. Levinson and Bradley explained how in the lead-up to that event Egypt's secular revolutionaries were completely outmaneuvered.

According to their account, the Brotherhood decided to call the demonstration "Shari'a Friday." Failing to understand that the game was over, the secularists tried to regain what they thought was the unity of the anti-regime ranks from earlier in the year.

"Islamists and revolutionary leaders spent three days negotiating principles they could all support at the coming Friday demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square. They reached an agreement and the revolution seemed back on track."

One secularist leader, Rabab el-Mahdi, referred to the agreement as "The perfect moment. A huge achievement."

But then came the double cross.

"Hours before the demonstration, hard-line Salafi Islamists began adorning the square with black-andwhite flags of jihad and banners calling for the implementation of Islamic law. Ms. Mahdi made frantic calls to Brotherhood leaders, who told her there was little they could do."

Checkmate.

THE DIFFERENCE between the Brotherhood and the secularists is a fundamental one. The Brotherhood has always had a vision of the Egypt it wants to create. It has always used all the tools at its disposal to advance the goal of creating an Islamic state in Egypt.

For their part, the secularists have no ideological unity and so share no common vision of a future Egypt. They just oppose the repression of the military. Opposing repression is not a political program. It is a political act. It can destroy. It cannot rule.

So when the question arose of how to transform the protests that caused the US to abandon Mubarak and sealed the fate of his regime into a new regime, the secularists had no answer. All they could do was keep protesting military repression.

The Brotherhood has been the most popular force in Egypt for decades. Its leaders recognized that to take over the country, all they needed was the power to participate in the elections and the authority to ensure that the election results mattered - that is, control over writing the constitution. And so, once the secularists fomented Mubarak's overthrow, their goal was to ensure their ability to participate in the elections and to ensure that the parliament would control the constitution-writing process.

To achieve these goals, they were equally willing to collaborate with the secularists against the military and with the military against the secularists. To achieve their goals they were willing - as they did before Shari'a Friday last July - to negotiate in bad faith.

While instructive, the Journal's article fell short because the reporters failed to recognize that the Brotherhood outmaneuvered the military junta in the same way that it outmaneuvered the secularists. The article starts with the premise that the military's decision to stage an effective coup d'etat last week spelled an end to the Egyptian revolution and the country's reversion to the military dictatorship that has ruled the state since the 1950s.

Levinson and Bradley claim, "Following the rulings by the high court this week [which canceled the results of the parliamentary elections and ensured continued military control over the country regardless of the results of the presidential elections], the Brotherhood's strategy of cooperation with the military seems failed."

But actually, that is not the case. By permitting the Brotherhood to participate in the elections for parliament and the presidency, the military signed the death warrant of its regime. The Brotherhood will rule Egypt. The only thing left to be determined is whether its takeover will happen quickly or slowly.

To understand why this is the case, it is important to notice what happened in Turkey. When the Islamist AKP party won the 2002 elections, the Turkish military was constitutionally authorized to control the country. As the guardians of Turkey's secular state, Turkey's military was constitutionally empowered to overthrow democratically elected governments.

Ten years later, Turkey is a populist, authoritarian, Islamic state. Half the general officer corps is in prison, held without charge or on trumped up charges. Turkey's judiciary and civil service are controlled by Islamists. The AKP is filling the military's officer corps with its loyalists.

When you know what you want, you use all the tools at your disposal to achieve your goals. When you don't know what you want, no matter what tools you hold, you will fail to achieve your goals.

The Egyptian military today is far weaker than the Turkish military was in 2002. And it has already been outmaneuvered by the Brotherhood. The only way for it to secure its hold on power is through brute force. And the generals have already shown they are unwilling to use sufficient force to repress the Brotherhood.

The regime's decision to outlaw the parliament and decree the military above the president was not a show of strength. It was a panicked act of desperation by a regime that knows its days are numbered. So was its decision to delay announcing the winner of the presidential elections.

When Morsy declared victory in the presidential elections on Sunday, he did so surrounded by members of the just-dissolved parliament. His act was a warning to the military. The Brotherhood will not allow the ruling to stand.

It is possible the Brotherhood will stand down in this confrontation with the military over the parliamentary election. But the military will emerge vastly weakened. And when the next round of confrontation inevitably arrives, the military will have even less clout. And so on and so forth.

THE INEVITABILITY of the Islamic takeover of Egypt means that the peace between Israel and Egypt is meaningless. Confrontation is coming. The only questions that remain are how long it will take and what form it will come in. If it happens slowly, it will be characterized by a gradual escalation of cross-border attacks from Sinai by Hamas and other jihadist groups. Hamas's sudden eagerness to take responsibility for the mortar attacks against southern Israel as well as Monday morning's murderous cross-border attack are signs of things to come.

With the Brotherhood ascending to power, the security cooperation Israel has received from the Egyptian security forces in Sinai is over. And the regime won't suffice with doing nothing to stop terror. It will encourage it. Just as the Egyptian military sponsored and organized the fedayeen raids from Gaza in the 1950s, so today the regime will sponsor and eventually organize irregular attacks from Sinai and Gaza.

In the rapid-path-to-confrontation scenario, the Egyptian military itself will participate in attacks against Israel. Egyptian troops may take potshots at Israelis from across the border. They may remilitarize Sinai. They may escalate attacks against the US-commanded MFO forces in Sinai that are supposed to keep the peace with the goal of convincing them to withdraw.

Whether the confrontation happens tomorrow or in a year or two, the question of whether the military remains the titular ruler of Egypt or not is irrelevant to Israel.

In their attempt to maintain their power and privilege, the first bargaining chip the generals will sacrifice is their support for the peace with Israel. With the US siding with the Brotherhood against the military, maintaining the peace treaty has ceased to be important for the generals.

This dismal situation requires Israel's leaders to take several steps immediately. First, our leaders must abandon their diplomatic language regarding Egypt. No point is served by not acknowledging that the southern front - dormant since 1981 - has reawakened and that Israel's peace with Egypt is now meaningless.

Recall that it was under Mubarak's leadership that the Egyptian media reported that the Mossad was deploying sharks as secret agents and ordering them to attack tourists along Egypt's seacoast in an effort to destroy Egypt's tourism industry.

Since Israel doesn't need to actually do or say anything to cause the Egyptians to attack, we might as well be honest in our own discussion of the situation. At a minimum, frank talk will ensure that the steps we take on the ground to meet the challenge of Egypt will be based on reality and not on an attempt to ignore reality.

Straight talk is also important in the international arena. For the past 30 years, in the interest of protecting the peace treaty, Israel never defended itself against Egypt's diplomatic assaults on its very right to exist. Now it can and must fight back with full force.

At a minimum, this will enable Israel to wage a coherent diplomatic defense of whatever military action it will eventually need to take to defend itself against Egyptian aggression.

As to that aggression, we don't have any good options on the ground. We cannot operate openly in Sinai. If we retaliate against missile attacks with air strikes, the Brotherhood-led Egyptian government will use our defensive action to justify war. So we need to massively expand our ability to operate covertly.

Aside from that, we must equip and train our military to win a war against the US-trained and-armed Egyptian military.

However the Egyptian election results pan out, the die has been cast. We must prepare for what is coming.

“I can’t dismiss the rumor, and I can’t 100 percent accept that it will happen. But because of the trend of events, there is every possibility that something like that will happen,” Rev. Lawi P. Pokti, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, told ICC.

ICC’s Jonathan Racho explained that this is all part of the group’s plan.

“They had a parliamentary meeting, and in that meeting they decided to step up their attacks against the government, against Christians and to finally establish their Islamic state,” Racho said. “We don’t know why they chose this particular time, but it looks like they want to step up their efforts to overthrow the Nigerian government.”

He noted that Boko Haram has also set its sights on the south.

“Boko Haram is using another strategy to kill Christians in the south,” he said. “They want to poison food that is grown and produced by Christians in the south. They’re trying to do that in a systematic way. So they’re using all different ways to establish an Islamic state and oppose the Nigerian government.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Africa analyst, Morgan Roach, said the report, if confirmed, shows the group has its sights set on the government.

“Boko Haram is obviously trying to intimidate the Nigerian government and the Nigerian people,” he said. “There are also reports that the group has the support of some of the northern politicians.”

The new round of anti-Christian assaults comes only days after a series of street shootouts in Kaduna province killed 100 civilians and a continued string of church bombings killed at least 50 people.

Western analysts have cautioned against ignoring the threat to the government posed by the Islamic group. Racho said it would be a mistake to underestimate them because of Boko Haram’s organization.

“They have a parliament, they hold meetings and they make decisions,” he said. “From all indications, it looks like Boko Haram is a very sophisticated organization. It’s very organized, and they do what they say they’re going to do.”

Racho warned that the Islamic group is also well-connected.

“The 300 suicide bombers are trained in how to handle military weapons and explosives,” he explained. “They took their training in places like Somalia and Mauritania. It has an international network, and it’s also a part of al-Qaida.”

Trauma, viruses, or bacteria cause the death of a biological entity. Viruses and bacteria are major killers of human beings and present great challenges to medicine. They can be deadly and have the uncanny ability to mutate. Yet they are there for their mission of ending life.

Life exists due to balance: body and soul, good and evil, and life and death. This holds true even to the lesser foundations of our lives, and how we spend our time. The small, seemingly trivial ripples that we create each day eventually build into a wave -- the wave of mankind. The moment a new entity is formed, an array of forces work to end it. Death, in effect, is pre-birth. Without death, everything freezes in place. Death often provides the raw material for the new birth. The death and decay of a tree, for instance, supplies the needed nutrients for the seed to grow; the Newtonian physics' obsolescence provided the foundation for Einstein's relativity theory.

Death and renewal are also fundamental to religion. It is for this reason that many religions promised renewal in the person of a savior. The Jews, for instance, expect the Messiah; the Christians long for the second coming; and some Muslims pray for the appearance of the Mahdi, while other Shia Muslims supplicate God for the return of Imam Hussein.

Poorly understood and little-appreciated are psychosocial viruses -- PSVs. As is the case with their biological kin, psychosocial viruses also work to corrupt any idea, mental functions, or belief and help supplant them with new ones. Various forms of mental disorders are the result of interaction between the PSVs and the person's predisposition to the condition. Not all mutations caused by PSVs are pathological. Many serve to advance the human enterprise. Without contributions of the beneficial PSVs, humanity would still be stunted in its development at the level of day one.

In the case of Islam, a special group of PSVs set out to work the minute Muhammad launched his faith, and mutation rapidly followed. First, there was the Islam of Mecca, or the Islam of Meekness. For thirteen years, Muhammad's teachings, as recorded in the early Suras of the Quran, were about many good things. Very few people became attracted to what he preached. In fact, the people scorned the man, harassed him, and eventually made him flee his hometown of Mecca for Medina. Then a major mutation took place: the Islam of Medina, or the "Islam of Tyranny," arrived on the scene. The Quran Suras of Medina are replete with exhortations of intolerance, exclusivity, and sanctioning of violence against non-Muslims. This mutation deeply appealed to the temperament of the Arab Bedouins, and they flocked to Muhammad's faith.

The PSV of the time of Muhammad continued to mutate as it reached other peoples and other lands. Each people's own ideas and beliefs -- their cognitive immune system -- responded differently to the invader. Some completely resisted the assault and defeated it. Others were overwhelmed and forced into submission. Yet some of the vanquished, over time, managed to repel the invader, while others incorporated it to various extents into their own systems of belief. In due course, the mutation among the vanquished people became so divergent that some of the variants can hardly be recognized as the progeny of the original.

Islam of today is composed of a dozen major sects and hundreds of sub-sects and schools. Just two examples should demonstrate the fact that Muhammad's Islam has decomposed.

One branch of Sunni Islam, the Wahhabi, has interbred with the Pashtun culture of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the result has been the Taliban version of Islam: a most reactionary, repressive, and savage "religion."

On the Shiite side, for example, there is a sect of the Ghulat Alavi that holds only to one of the five pillars of Islam: the Shehadah, an Islamic credo that says, "I testify that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger." This sect does not subscribe to the remaining four pillars of praying five times a day, fasting one month a year, pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime, and paying the religious tax of zakat. The Alavi women are allowed participation in all religious events and are not required to don the hijab -- a stark contrast to the Taliban, who deny even rudimentary education to women and forbid them from leaving home without the accompaniment of a male relative.

The Ghulat Alavis deify the Imam Ali and the other Imams. They particularly revere the Imam Ali and worship him as a co-rank of God. They profess, " Ali khoda neest, valee as khoda joda neest" -- Ali is not God, but he is not apart from God. This very same sect places Imam Ali above the Prophet Muhammad.

Ideas and beliefs should thrive or fail on merit only, and not because someone says that they are the best and that everyone must accept them without questioning. Let the meritorious and the fittest survive, and let the phony and the unfit die. It is this form of freedom that has been the engine of progress in all fields of human endeavors. And it is the exact opposite practice of stifling free inquiry in many organized religions; that is the main cause of much superstition, stagnation, and even untold suffering.

What needs to sink into the Western people's minds is the realization that, to the Muslims, the idea of freedom and free thinking is largely an alien concept.

From birth onward, a Muslim's brain is packed with the notion that everything in life is predicated on the will of Allah. Allah is in charge of all things at all times. Allah is very much a hands-on God. He does the thinking, he does the ordaining, and he decides the outcome for everything large and small. And since Allah is the all-knowing as well as the all-everything, the duty of the faithful is unquestioned obedience in all matters, irrespective of any and all contradictory evidence.

Islam presently has its stranglehold over a billion humans, posing an existential threat to all non-Muslims. When this billion and a half adhere to the pathological belief of Islam and use it as their marching order of life, the rest of humanity can ignore the threat only at its own peril.

Once again, Islam has risen from the ashes and is on a campaign of conquest throughout the world. Hordes of life-in-hand foot-soldier fanatical Muslims are striving to kill and get killed. All they want is the opportunity to discharge their homicidal-suicidal impulse, on their way to Allah's promised glorious paradise. And in the background, granting the foot-soldiers' wishes, are their handlers, the puppeteers, who pull the strings and detonate these human bombs. Those who cherish life must recognize these emissaries of death -- what makes them, what motivates them, and how best to defend against them.

The campaign of death waged by the Islamist jihadist, be he a puppet or a puppeteer, is energized by the belief of delectable rewards that await the faithful implementer of Allah's dictates. Through highly effective indoctrination, the jihadist has come to believe firmly in Islam's grand delusion. He believes that Allah is the one and only supreme creator of earth and heavens, that it is his duty and privilege to abide by Allah's will and carry out his plans at all costs. He believes firmly in a gloriously wonderful immortal afterlife in paradise, for which a martyr's death is the surest, quickest admission. Although the dominating theme of the delusion is quasi-spiritual, the promised rewards of the afterlife awaiting the martyr are sensual and material. All the things and activities that the jihadist desires and cannot attain or practice, and rejects in his earthly life, will be purified and proffered to him in the paradise of the next life. Thus goes the promise.

It is also important to understand that the human mind is not a perfect discerner of objective reality. In actuality, reality is in the mind of the beholder. The outside world supplies only bits and pieces of raw material that the mind puts together to form its reality. Depending on the type and amount of bits and pieces that a given mind receives, its reality can be very different from that of another mind.

Nonetheless, it is time for Islam to shed its "burqa." The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. In the age of instantaneous communication and with rising literacy, the task of keeping this stone-age belief called Islam under cover is an impossibility.

No belief system or set of ideas, be it religious, scientific, philosophical, political, or otherwise, should be protected from open, honest criticism. It is up to the individual consumer to decide for himself, to the best of his ability and the compelling nature of the information, the value and veracity of any offering in a marketplace of free ideas.

None of the numerous contending Islamic sects is indeed the Islam Muhammad launched. That original Islam died with Muhammad, and the belief immediately started splintering and kept on splintering, with each splinter claiming to be the true Islam and renouncing and fighting every other splinter. This time around, the invigorated Muslims are using the immense amount of petrodollars they extract from oil-addicted non-Muslims. The sword is temporarily replaced by just as deadly a weapon, the petrodollar. Before long, the fanatical Muslims running Iran aim to add a more deadly modern version of the sword: the Islamic bomb. With the bomb in one hand and the other hand on the oil spigot, the religion of peace and brotherhood will have the power to bring the non-Muslim world to its knees.

The very question would have been unthinkable at one time. Israel, reborn after an exile that was almost comically lengthy, had a modicum of international support until the tiny nation went Bruce Lee on the Arab world in the Six Day War.

Bleeding and humiliated, the surrounding Arab countries then began an oh-so-effective propaganda campaign that now has too many people asking an odious question: “Should Israel Exist?”

This is the title of a terrific new book by acclaimed author Michael Curtis, and his sub-title says it all: “A Sovereign Nation Under Attack by the International Community.”

Today in the international community, the Palestinians have succeeded in introducing a novel idea – centering around Israel disappearing – but posed as two scenarios: Either a “two-state” solution, by which the Palestinian state would be armed to the teeth and serve as a staging area for the final Final Solution; or a “bi-national” state of Palestine, where Jews and Arabs would gather wildflowers and sit under the stars for a folk music concert.

Both “state” ideas are in fact merely window dressing for the goal of Yasser Arafat’s life: the destruction of Israel.

The good guys have a host of skilled troops still left on the front lines of this propaganda war, however, and Curtis would rank as a field general.

In his book, Curtis (a distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers) takes on a series of issues that really are charges against Israel: colonialism, apartheid, the Arab “right of return” and the “occupation,” among many others. He deftly presents the facts in each case, displaying Israel’s critics/assassins as bereft of truth.

In Chapter 5 (“The Charge of Apartheid: The Big Lie”), Prof. Curtis lists the groundwork that was laid in charging Israel with being an apartheid state, a la South Africa.

He then writes: “All this prejudice was paradoxically the perversion of reality.”

He then goes on to piece-by-piece dismantle this most reprehensible charge, pointing out that unlike South Africa, for instance, the Israelis have always allowed the minority people (in this case the Palestinians) such things as voting rights and positions in government!

Chapter 16 (“The Issue of Settlements”) exposes some of the most egregious lies about Israel and is one of my favorite sections of “Should Israel Exist?”

Here is where Curtis really shines as an historian and writer: “After the 1967 war, Cyrus Vance, then U.S. Secretary of State, on July 29, 1967, asserted ‘it is an open question as to who has legal right to the West Bank.’”

(How funny that this same Vance was later one of the nuttier features of the Jimmy Carter era.)

Curtis provides this kind of historical data, which Israel’s critics either don’t know, or conveniently forget: “The initial problem is the fact that the areas now known as Israel and the West Bank were only provinces of the Ottoman Empire, rather than states, either Israeli or Palestinian, with their own sovereignty.”

We usually hear that the Jews came in and stole Palestinian land, period.

One of the most intriguing outcomes of “Should Israel Exist?” is a further question: Will Israel’s critics be forced to come to grips with Curtis’ decimation of their positions? His research and critical-thinking skills are that good.

It is in Chapter 23 that I believe Curtis most effectively makes the case for Israel, because we get down to brass tacks: Is Jewish life of value to the international community?

As Curtis lays out the case for Israel’s security and defense, I can only imagine what the lefties like Brian McLaren and Hanan Ashrawi would say to the following, with regard to the famous “wall”: “The fence has greatly improved security, been an effective defensive deterrent, and has successfully reduced the threats to Israeli citizens and the loss of life. The results are evident. For three years after the start of the September 2000 intifada, there were 93 suicide attacks resulting in 447 Israeli deaths and over 4,300 wounded; since the building of the fence there have been only five attacks a year and an average of ten Israelis killed a year. In 2010, there were five Israeli casualties.”

(Actually, I know what McLaren and Ashrawi would say. In essence, Jewish life is not as important as a Palestinian family that is inconvenienced going to visit family in a neighboring village. I hope people notice the grotesque and sinister nature of such a position.)

I’ve read quite a few books that present facts and state Israel’s position, but “Should Israel Exist?”would rank in the top two or three; I am excited to observe in the coming weeks and months the wide impact I believe this book will have.

People often ask me: “What can I do to help Israel?” I always answer that they should educate themselves. Michael Curtis’s “Should Israel Exist?” is the central place to start.

Imagine if someone suggested that you should read a book that discusses whether or not Norway, or the United States for that matter, should exist. You would be shocked or at least surprised that anyone would want to question the right of a sovereign nation, and a member of the United Nations, to exist. In the case of Israel, however, posing that question does not seem to be out-of-bounds. At any given time, you might hear of or even attend conferences and seminars on that very subject in some American or Western European university.

It is, therefore, no surprise that Michael Curtis, a distinguished scholar and professor emeritus at Rutgers University, has devoted a whole book to examining the subject and refuting the claims of those who question Israel's right to exist. The result is a masterly essay in which the best tools of scholarship are employed in the service of what is, after all, a moral case in support of Israel.

At first glance, Israel could be regarded as typical of the 150 or so nation-states that have emerged in the four corners of the globe in the wake of the World War II. Politically, it is the fruit of a liberation struggle against an imperial power—in this case Great Britain. Territorially, it is located in a chunk of an even older colonial power—in this case the Ottoman Empire. Legally, it is a creature of the United Nations, which, as successor to the British mandate on Palestine, endorsed the creation of the Jewish state.

So, why should Israel be singled out as the target of a campaign of vilification seldom waged against any other nation?

The answer, as Curtis dramatically shows, is that Israel is different.

To start with, it is Jewish. That makes it the target of anti-Semitic sentiments and resentments that have deep roots in many Western and some Islamic societies. In many countries, anti-Semitism is no longer regarded as just another opinion, it is a crime punishable by the law. The way to get round that obstacle is to air anti-Semitic sentiments in the guise of a critique of Israel as a nation-state. To make that somewhat more palatable, a bit of spice is often added by evoking the sufferings of the Palestinians. However, once the mayonnaise of political grievances against Israel is pushed aside, one is often left with the old unpalatable hatred of the Jew.

Then there is the fact that Israel has been a democratic island in a neighborhood of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. The emergence of new democracies in the Middle East may well change the region's political landscape.

At the moment, however, as a democracy, Israel remains a threat to the despotic systems still dominant in the region.

Worse still, from the point of view of its detractors, Israel has been an outpost of the democratic world for more than six decades. It is, in the sense that Curtis sees Israel, the proverbial "canary in the coalmine." Throughout the Cold War, Israel acted as the advance guard of the free world in a region of vital geostrategic importance for the United States and its allies.

After the Cold War ended, Israel found itself in the front line of the global war against Islamic jihad in its many different forms. That, in turn, meant that Israel was regarded as arch-foe by Islamists beating their chests about the "occupation" of a chunk of Islam's territory by an "infidel" power. Centuries of resentments caused by the "loss of Muslim lands" in Spain, Russia, and India, among others, are blended into a single witch's brew of hatred of and desire for revenge against Israel.

Thus, Israel's very existence, as Curtis shows, has led to the emergence of a curious coalition in which traditional anti-Semites, Stalinist Cold Warriors, useful idiots, pan-Arab hegemonists, anti-Americans of all stripes, and Islamist revanchists are united against a common foe.

In the Middle East, as Kenneth Bialkin notes in his introduction to Curtis's essay, history is "in the making but without a guidebook". What might emerge from the current wave of revolutionary change is anybody's guess. The best-case scenario is that the creation of democratic governments in at least some Arab states would remove a few of the hurdles to the acceptance of Israel as a neighbor if, at least initially, not as a friend. But even then, Israel's many enemies in the West would remain, clinging to hatred for the Jewish state as the backbone of their moribund ideologies.

Should Israel Exist? Curtis's answer is a resounding "Yes" backed by a masterly historical exposé and an unfailing moral commitment to what he regards as the justice of his cause.

An insightful historian, Curtis shows that he is an equally persuasive rhetorician. Add to all that the passion that Curtis injects into his work and you have a book that is both informative and enjoyable.